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“What’s between you and Cammie?”
“Why are you asking?” If this fucker told me that he and Cameron were dating, I knew I’d lose my ever-loving mind.
He seemed to read my tension intuitively. “Look, I think Cammie is great and I’d have to be dead not to be attracted to her.” He lifted a defensive hand at what he saw on my face. “She’s made it clear she’s not interested in casual and that’s all I am interested in. You … well, you look at me like you’d like to rip off my head anytime I’m near her, so there’s definitely something going on between the two of you.”
I let out a beleaguered breath, staring out at the harbor and the gray clouds gathering just offshore.
“If you want her, what are you waiting for?”
My head whipped back to Torin and he braced, like he thought I was about to go on the attack.
Instead, his words settled over me, nudging at my impatience and tipping it right over the edge. I smacked a hand off his chest with a nod and strode away, anticipation thrumming through me.
“Was that an answer?” he called after me.
“Aye!” I called back before I disappeared around the corner.
I hurried to my place to have my lunch and to think.
After the Greig revelations, I had an understandable meltdown, and I’d renewed my sessions with Dr. Gardener. It had helped me process the absolute mental surrealism of the situation and also my growing need to be the one Cameron turned to. When she did the opposite and shut me out completely, I needed someone to talk to about it. Dr. Gardener had advised giving Cameron time considering the emotional turmoil she was going through, but I was worried if I kept giving her time, so much of it would pass it would divide us forever.
The idea of people like fucking Roddy saying awful shit like that to her on a daily basis, of her putting up with that, it enraged me. It frustrated me. I wanted to be there for her. I wanted to protect her from all of that.
I wanted her to let me.
As I stepped into the house, the door pushed my mail further into the hallway. After I bent down to pick it up, the sight of a familiar handwritten envelope interrupted my Cameron obsession. My pulse skittered as I dropped my lunch on the sideboard and ripped open the letter.
Deer Forde,
Ah hud a bad day today. Sumtimes ah wish u were here to help. But today ah was just mad at u fur not being here. Fur not seeing me. Why dont u see me? Who are u seeing? u beter not be seeing anybody else. OK? Ah’ll be really mad. And ah might do sumthing u dont like. Ah luv u. Ah luv u so much ah think it might kill me. Or u.
urs 4ever
“Fuck!” I jammed the letter into the drawer of my sideboard, shaking with anger.
I’d received a ranting letter like this every month for the past four months. I realized the first letter arriving on April Fool’s Day was merely a coincidence. I’d even taken the last three to our local police constable William Shearing. He’d told me there wasn’t a lot they could do about it and when I asked if they could run prints on it, he said it was too costly a procedure for something this minor.
He suggested someone was pranking me.
If he was right, they were really starting to piss me off.
Grabbing my lunch, I walked into the kitchen and sank down into a chair at the table to eat and think. Plan. Strategize. The past few months had been the worst I could remember in a long time. I was vehemently ignoring the weird, creepy letters because I had bigger problems.
In Aberdeen, even during all that trauma, I’d felt a kindling of hope that Cameron and I might finally have found our way back to each other.
As soon as we got home, she slammed and locked that door in my face.
I didn’t understand.
But I was done giving Cameron McQuarrie space.
She was mine to protect. She always had been. And I was done letting her make the same mistakes I’d made over the years, pushing me away like I’d pushed her away.
16. Forde
Twenty-one years ago
Approaching my aunt and uncle’s house was like how I imagined it felt for a prisoner who had escaped his cell for a breather and was trying to find his way back in before anyone realized he’d left in the first place.
